Spigot malware

Spigot is a large family of questionable software that can hijack your web browsers, replace existing homepage, search engine, or error page. It also displays a number of pop-ups and redirects you to certain websites.

Spigot browser hijackers are developed by Spigot Inc. and are easily detected by anti-malware applications. The company represents itself as one of the world’s leading digital performance-based marketing companies.[1]

Spigot browser hijacker is easy to recognized and do not worth installing.

How to recognize if your browser is hijacked

Spigot software family is labeled as browser hijackers[2]. They target web browsers: some of Spigot hijackers are extensions for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Infected Internet Explorer users might notice a change of default Search Provider and the different home page. In addition, Spigot tries to install the Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs)[3] on Microsoft Edge. Once the Spigot hijacks the browser users receive an Unsupported Browser[4] notice.

If you get infected do not panic!

Once your browser gets infected with this browser hijacker, Spigot typically changes the search page with a toolbar and some shortcuts, redirecting to sites where users can find the information or functionality that hijackers can provide.

However, these do not add any more functionality than a few bookmarks. So we recommend to avoid these browser hijackers, instead, it might collect information about users, such as search terms, most visited websites, data that is entered and allows using collected data for targeted advertising campaigns that might deliver infected ads.

It is worth to mention that Browser hijackers are not identified as very malicious threats. Malware is characterized by intrusive and disturbing behavior once the device is infected. Browser hijackers are created in order to steal users banking credentials, seal important files as ransomware or even spying remotely using the device’s camera. None of these activities can be carried out by browser hijackers, so it is not a malware.

Browser Hijackers are capable of replacing exciting home page, error page or search engine with its own. The developers of browser hijackers might make income by driving traffic to the particular site and promoting it, and/or display fake pop-ups asking to install software updates, and/or redirect to questionable websites. In addition, it might also notify users about detected malware, viruses, and other malicious threats and offering users to clean them by installing questionable software.

How can your browser get infected with Spigot

Similarly like most of the browser hijackers, Spigot is distributed in questionable and suspicious websites, can be bundled in freeware software, or downloaded through file-sharing and P2P sites, or through malicious pop-ups.

It is worth to mention that the websites where Spigot browser hijackers can be downloaded will show you the EULA[5]:

The Software is a free desktop application that offers you direct links to websites from your new preferred homepage and saves your new preferred home page and/or new tab page. When we set your Browser’s settings using the Software, they will be saved automatically on Chrome™, Firefox®, and Internet Explorer®. As part of the installation process of the Software, we may change your Internet Browser settings and/or provide you with the ability to opt to make changes to your Internet Browser settings.

Spigot browser hijackers typically come from proinstall-download.com or report-download.com (these both websites are recognized and blocked as malicious by most s the security and antivirus systems with web security feature). Both of these domains are registered with GoDaddy certificate. In addition, these hijackers have been noticed spreading with Dealio, PDFCreator, Wdgi Toolbar and Koyote Soft.

Spigot targets both Windows and Mac OS X and can affect Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and other frequently used browsers.

Note: If you are not sure what security suite or antivirus system to chose, make sure to check out our Security page.

Remove Spigot from your Windows system

If you download Spigot we highly recommend you to remove this browser hijacker or malicious toolbar from your system. To do so, you can use antivirus and adware removal tool. Just simply scan the system with reliable application and remove Spigot using it.

If you prefer to remove Spigot this manually from your Windows operating system, take the following steps:

Right-click in the lower left corner of the screen the Windows key to open Quick Access Menu. Then, select Control Panel and Uninstall a Program.

In the list of all installed programs locate Spigot Toolbar, and other related and unknown suspicious files.

Uninstall selected programs and click OK in order to Dave these changes.

In addition,to clean your registry delete the following registry values: